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DL/VK2JI – SOTA Europe – April 20th. 2014 – DL/BE-094 Irschenhausen

Preparation:

As my German call sign came through, this activation was done as DD5LP/P. This was the first time I had used my new call sign.

The plan for this activation was again to work chasers from VK and if possible also work Rod VK2LAX/P as a Summit-to-Summit contact. Martin DF3MC had asked if he could come along as he had not yet managed an S2S to VK. Unfortunately as it turned out he could not make Easter Sunday, so perhaps I’ll have to find another summit in the next few weeks and do it all again (not that I needed an excuse for that).

Wx forecast – RAIN!

Wx previous day SNOW!

Actual Wx – no rain, sunshine but still only 2 degrees at 7:30am local time Brrrrrr!

The Location:

Irschenhausen is a country village located about 10 km South East of Starnberg which itself is located about 20km South West of Munich in Bavaria. The “summit” is actually a hill within a forest adjacent to the village. In some ways similar to my previous activation (Berndorfer Buchet) which was also in a forest, views are limited. I found during my “reccie” a day earlier however in this case there were small trees still in place suitable to fasten the antenna squid pole to. Access from the public road is about a 15 minute brisk walk up reasonable tracks. No actual climbing was required however the summit itself was under about 3 inches of fallen leaves. Luckily I found a very broad tree stump to set up my station on and had the antenna (proudly flying the SOTA flag) attached to a small tree about 3 metres away.

The Activation:

I had measured the time required to get to site however as I woke up earlier and there was less traffic than the previous day, I arrived a good 30 minutes earlier than the planned UTC 06:00 start.

I took a little extra time to install my small linear amplifier in circuit as a test and I estimate that this raised the output from 5w PEP to perhaps 10w PEP. I had to run it straight from an 11v LIPO rather than from the 13.8v inverter that for some reason didn’t seem to want to work, so output from it’s, at best 14w output would be reduced.

As soon as I had the linked dipole antenna up and the FT817 and amplifier turned on, I could hear VK stations. Paul VK5PAS was blasting in while working Peter VK3PF, so I waited and gave Peter a call. He was pretty weak but we managed the S2S contact. After that an easy contact with Paul VK5PAS, followed by Matt VK1MA who also was putting in a strong signal from Mount Ginini and the forth contact needed for me to have officially activated the summit came from Ernie VK3DET. So I managed to activate this German summit purely with VK contacts – this was not planned but was a nice bonus especially with two of them being S2S contacts.

I am also glad to report that we managed the DD5LP – VK2LAX S-2-S contact.

During the activation I was constantly changing frequencies, not only to find stations but also to move away from QRM from either adjacent stations or a station who decided to put a carrier on the frequency I am calling on!

Take a listen to the pile-up that Matt VK1MA had in the video below and see how badly some operators were operating.

Please consider adopting the DX Code of conduct whether you are a SOTA activator or chaser as the rules are as valid for SOTA as for DX chasing.